Re: Am I the only one that feels like TDKR prevents Nolan's trilogy from being perfec

I think the fact that they conceived a Batman story in the vein of a historical epic separated it from the herd, including the two previous movies. It's also the only superhero film to age its characters 8 years from the previous film. So I think it had the biggest scope for a film in its genre (besides maybe Watchmen, which was a slavishly faithful adaptation).

I think TDKR, like many of Nolan's movies, rely on convention as much as it subverts it. I wouldn't say it subverts it as much as TDK (the biggest trick TDK pulled was using the "save the girl or X choice" and actually not letting the hero save both), but I liken it to a very turbulent flight that manages to come in for a smooth landing. TDKR was coming off a movie so dark that it was able to establish a scenario in which Batman's death seems like the inevitable outcome. The movie uses this as a starting point and reverse engineers itself towards a happier ending from there. So I'd say the end result could be considered to be "safe", but it's kind of hard to make an "unsafe" movie when everyone's expecting you to make one after TDK. It played with expectations in an interesting and engaging way, to me.